Knights return
by tc1
Summary: A side trip in time...What if events at jusundo were a bit...different. this is really the first visible effect of changes wrought long ago. how will Ranma learn to live without the one he loves?


These are not my characters, for if they were, I would be rich...which is not the case. I  
use them without permission, and most likely in a way the original creators would not  
contemplate. OH WELL, such is the way of fan-fiction :) this story is NOT used for  
profit, just for entertainment.  
  
Knights Return  
  
Chapter 1A  
On the top of Jusendo, a fierce battle of epic proportions was taking place,  
involving a Neriman martial artist, and the Demi-god of the bird people, Saffron. Saffron  
was standing in the way of Ranma saotome's only hope of changing Akane back from the  
doll like state she had been changed to.  
  
"I've got to use it!", Ranma thought to himself as he dodged another attack by  
Saffron. "The new Hyru-Shoten-Ha I made will kill Saffron and...and I'll be able to save  
Akane!." but as he prepared to unleash this powerful attack, a single stray thought  
entered his mind. "Kill? do I really want to...kill?"  
His hesitation almost cost his life, as Saffron took the moment of distraction to fire  
hundreds of fireballs at him.  
  
As Saffron recharged after the salvo, surprised that a mere human had been able to  
avoid that much firepower, Ranma saw an opening, and jumped into the stream of water  
coming from the dragons mouth, just before the dolls eyes closed completely.  
Ranma held the restored Akane in his arms, and smiled at her. And she smiled a  
beautiful smile back. Then she kissed him.  
But while the two were caught up in each other, Saffron smiled an evil smile and  
released one small projectile. Unlike his previous ones, this was tiny, and had  
comparatively little power. Just enough to pierce Akane's body and destroy her heart.  
  
Ranma finished the kiss, and held Akane closely, looking into her eyes. He felt a  
slight jump, almost a twitch, and saw Akane's expression quickly turn from relief to terror  
and pain. She opened her mouth to say something, but instead of words, only a bit of  
blood came out.  
  
He watched in slowly dawning horror as the light in her eyes slowly went out.  
Thoughts ran through his head, going a million miles a second;  
Akane was dead.  
It was his fault.  
He wasn't fast enough.  
He deserved to die.  
  
He screamed, the wail of the lost, the cry of the dammed. He screamed the sound  
of ultimate suffering.  
  
Saffron smiled, as he watched the human suffer. Enough of this, he thought, its  
time to put out of his misery. With those thoughts, and an evil smile he readied his largest  
fireball.  
  
He gazed at her one last time, one last time before he threw his life away in a  
suicide attack to destroy himself and mark her grave forever. But Then he saw it, the  
small charred hole in her back, and knew that this was not his fault. He had just one last  
coherent thought; Saffron must die. Then all thoughts fled, and he knew only rage.  
  
He screamed again, but where the first was filled with loss and grief, this  
contained hate and rage. As he screamed, his aura exploded, shinning like a star on top of  
the mountain, destroying the pool he was standing in, and leaving a crater thirty feet wide.   
The dust slowly cleared, revealing a sight wondrous and terrible to behold.  
  
Ranma's hair had gone from dark black to purest white, and his aura, while  
diminished from "new star" level, was still almost painful to look at. His body had also  
changed, from his normal toned physique, to a colossal muscular form, destroying most of  
his clothing. As if this wasn't enough, he was floating in mid-air, 30 feet above the  
ground, with and expression of anger on his face.  
  
Then A gigantic fireball slammed into him, obscuring Ranma from view once  
again...  
  
When the dust began to settle over the now 50 foot crater, it revealed a scene  
similar to the first, but this time he looked...scary.  
  
He had a smile just like Saffron's on his face.  
  
  
------  
Many miles away in Japan...  
------  
Cologne was in her restaurant, doing the dishes herself for a change, when she felt  
it, a sudden, almost painful spike of power in the west. "What is this?," she muttered to  
herself, suddenly she dropped the plate she had been drying and stared off into the  
distance. "No...it can not be...son in law??" She shook her head, and tried to deny what  
she knew to be true, then sat down and began to make plans. If ranma was able to  
produce that much power, something terrible had happened...something terrible indeed!  
  
Happosai too felt Ranmas power surge, but unlike Cologne he knew what had  
happened. And it scared him. It scared him enough to almost run back to the cave he had  
been sealed in for all those years, to seal himself back up and try to forget that the world  
existed...almost, but not quite. He had one final task to accomplish before he could leave  
this world behind. He just hoped that he was wrong. He knew he wasn't.  
  
--------------  
China  
--------------  
  
"So much power!" Ryoga cried, his nose and ears bleeding from being so close to  
that much power being released. How can he do this!? He thought, slowly falling to his  
knees, his mind overloading. In the moments he had before he passed out he yelled  
"Ranma! Kill that thing!! For Akane!!" Then darkness overtook him, and he collapsed to  
the ground.  
  
  
Ranma hovered over the crater, glaring at Saffron for a few moments, then  
suddenly vanished from view, only to appear behind Saffron an instant later. Before the  
king of phoenix mountain could react, he was hit with four thousand punches, and nearly  
as many kicks, then blasted towards the ground.  
  
Any mortal would have been incapacitated by this, or even outright killed. But  
Saffron was most decidedly not a normal being. He winced at the pain for a moment, then  
dragged himself out of the new crater, and fired off into the sky, intending to pummel the  
insolent human who had dared injure him.  
  
His first mistake was closing with ranma again. He was instantly pounded from all  
sides, only escaping the onslaught when he used his powers to heat the air surrounding  
him to incredible heat.  
His second mistake was not throwing all that he could from a distance at Ranma.   
Not that it would have saved him, but it might have hurt Ranma enough to kill him  
afterwards.  
He didn't live long enough to make a third mistake. As he let the heat field  
diminish so he could begin his attack, Ranma was there again, pummeling him, and then  
dashing him into the ground once again.  
  
In the newly formed crater, Saffron barely held on to consciousness. His body was   
screaming in pain, driving everything else from his mind. Ranma slowly touched down  
beside him, the cruel smile never leaving his face.   
  
"It's time for him to die now", Ranma thought darkly, "and HIS death is not going  
to be as...pleasant...as Akane's!" He searched his mind for a technique that would cause  
the most suffering before obliterating its victim. Suddenly one came to mind, but it wasn't  
so much a memory as an...echo, a shadow of something he had once knew. He grasped at  
it and struggled to remember it completely. with a wrenching it came into focus, and he  
knew what it was and recoiled at brutality and power of it. He briefly considered simply  
using something lesser to do Saffron in, but the memory of the horror he was in Akane's  
eyes as her life faded steeled his resolve.  
No, he thought to himself, it was not brutal, simply a fitting punishment.  
  
With that he picked the weakly struggling Saffron up by the neck, and threw him  
into the air. Then he, for lack of a better word, took hold of a new power and drew it to  
him. It was like coming home, and being torn away from everything he had ever known.   
The power was as an intense silence, but also as million voices screaming out in terror.   
He almost lost himself in the sensations, but pulled himself back to the task at hand.   
raising his hands above his head, he gathered an enormous sphere of the energy,  
shuddering with the strain. The sphere was ebon, streaked with red the color of old blood.   
Then he brought it slowly in front of him, aiming at the form of saffron, who had begun  
his descent back to the earth. With a backlash which destroyed even more of the  
mountaintop, he released it. The entire attack early happened in complete and utter  
silence.  
  
The orb flew at Saffron, impacted, and slowly began disintegrating him as it  
traveled upwards at an incredible rate. It cleared the atmosphere and detonated, shining  
like the sun for a moment, then it faded, with nothing remaining to mark the grave of the  
defeated king.  
  
Ranma smiled, knowing that Akane had been avenged, then slowly collapsed.  
  
  
  
  
-Authors note  
  
Well here it is, my first real story, keep in mind that it's just a draft, and I welcome  
any C&C or help I may be offered. This is NOT a dragonball crossover, but you'll see  
what it is soon enough. this fic was inspired by dragonball Z, and by Wing.0 Dont ask  
how, I'mm not sure myself.  
  
till next time,  
  
_tc_  
  
  
WWW.ANGELFIRE.COM/WEIRD/TEFLONCAT/TCSCAVE.HTM  
  
  
neko-oni at angelfire dot com - for c&c/honest help/etc.  
tefloncat at angelfire dot com - for anything else  
(there, that should keep the robots away...) 


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